STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]

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There a many successful films with less action and more substance.

 

I think ST09 had the "dooooooood Im frist!!!" factor going...

 

True, this wasn't cerebral. But it came close to character moments juxtaposed by action moments... which is as close as you can come in this box office environment to what you want.

The cerebral thing with Trek will have to be in a TV show, I'm afraid.

 

What was it that Dennis Bailey guy used to say? Oh yeah. Absolutely Right.

 

Yeah I wonder where Dennis went?

 

QFT

 

And even then, I'm not sure in the current state of things on TV that such a show would be particularily cerebral. It might try to sell itself as such, however.

 

That seems like a shitty thing to do to people.

"Don't know what's going on? Send us 19.99 and we'll eventually send you a tape of the backstory long after the movie has left the theaters so then you can buy the tape for THAT, watch them in order in 6-12 months, and then finally understand why everyone is so upset."

 

TWOK clearly explains everything you need to know. Enterprise found the Botany Bay, Khan tried to steal the ship and kill Kirk, Kirk exiled them on a green planet, and the green planet turned into a desert.

Seriously, it's not that hard.

 

A substantive moral/political debate that would work best with Khan is over the belief that humans can engineer our bodies to be better than they are. The question becomes then, who would be the engineers and what would be their moral/legal obligations to society? And, how would we engineer ourselves, through natural or artificial means? (Some believe that in time humans may become an amalgamation of both the organic and the synthetic.)

 

No, that's skiffy fluff. Important, relevant issues are those that affect the way human beings actually live in the world right now. Ruminating about the ethics of future possibilities in so narrow a sense is entertaining for a debate club but doesn't really touch people's experience.

One could debate the ethics of eugenics in the original "Space Seed," but that was a pretty safe topic at the time since the writer would ultimately come down on the side of "well, they're not really superior anyway because we can kick their asses" - there'd been rather a bit of a dust-up along these lines called the Second World War which had formed what was acceptable public opinion about this kind of thing.

 

I'd love to grade it but...
Fuck cunt arse bastard motherfucker - I just discovered this fucking minute that our local fleapit had Into Darkness this week, without having advertised in advance, and the last fucking showing finishes in 20 minutes. Cunt fuck motherfucker. And from tomorrow it's back to pish for the blue-rinse crowd with The Great fucking Gatsby. Cunt.

 

At least you're handling the news like an adult.

 

Precisely. I always introduce people to Trek with TWOK and that's never been a problem.

 

I was thinking about how Khan might be used as a villain. As I don't understand the word "skiffy", the criticism falls short of convincing me that the issues I raised weren't fit for an action-adventure. Then I looked at the box office results for "Gattaca", and that convinced me.

About people's experiences, how many people have been directly impacted by a drone strike? And, of those people, how many would have seen this film? I would think the number would be small.

If you are speaking about people's experiences, how about a film about a society that is increasingly becoming aware of your activities and the loss of anonymity and privacy in that society? There is an active debate about the XBOX 1, because some of the features associated with this machine are raising concerns about privacy. Or is that too intellectual?

 

Who the hell would be confused by that? Khan and Kirk DO speak to each other on viewscreens. (And besides, there's other films - like The Fifth Element - where the hero and the villain never communicate AT ALL, and I'm not aware of any mass confusion over that issue...)

And there was a practical reason Kirk and Khan were never together in TWOK - the same set was used for both the Enterprise and Reliant bridges.

 

Indeed, I didn't say goat-felching clit-snorters once, so that's definitely me being polite and mature about it.

 

I think I'm going to add "goat-felching clit-snorters" to my stock lexicon.

 

No, you're not. And that is something I seriously wish to address:

Last time I was on this board, discussing the 2009 film and "The Motion Picture", I got a little supercilious in my manner toward people with an opposing opinion. That was wrong of me.

People are free to enjoy the movies they will -- without condescension, without animosity. Of course, I may still get a little strident in expressing myself, and I don't so much apologize for that. But I'd hate for anyone to feel insulted or demeaned when I'm simply giving the measure of my own feelings.

We're cool, J. Allen.

Montalban was more OTT, but that was a lot more fitting and enjoyable, to me.

Trek used to be theatrical and introspective in a pretty balanced way, in my opinion -- it was one of the delights of watching it. Now, under J.J. Abrams, it's more lively, but less engaging; more energetic, but less animating. If that makes any sense. It doesn't have the same push-pull tension; the same dynamic, the same texture. They've tried to appeal to the zeitgeist with the last two movies, and in the process much has been sacrificed. Again, IMO.

We can go the "NOMA" (Non Overlapping MAgisteria) route if you like, but I don't think the two performances are equally different or non-interfering. This movie's depiction was a very "blunt force" approach to Khan; and that seems to be J.J. Abrams' approach to, well, everything. It's less artistic, to me, and more simply matter-of-fact and throw-away: fast-food theatrics. I think a lot more could have been done to distance Cumberbatch's Khan and make him arresting and alluring in his own right; but, to me, it wasn't, and it doesn't seem to be part of Abrams' vocabulary to even try.

I saw some clips yesterday. I have to say that he seems pretty glib in "Sherlock" in a way that he isn't in STID. The writing in the BBC series seems sharper, funnier. There, Cumberbatch's portrayal is ably backed by solid screenplays that allow his character to fan his misanthropic feathers in some pretty colourful and amusing ways (it also helps that he has Martin Freeman as Watson to play off against). In STID, however, he seems divested of his acid cynicism, and merely comes across as po-faced, rigid, and cold: a morose antagonist spewing dialogue. His black humour peters out at "No ship should go down without her captain", which hardly sets my world on fire -- compare the way, say, Christopher Lee brought a refined, wheels-within-wheels elocution to George Lucas' dialogue in "Attack Of The Clones" (and the two or three minutes he appeared in "Revenge Of The Sith"), and here, Benedict Cumberbatch seems so lacking. I think Abrams and his writers were hoping to transplant what Cumberbatch has brought to the "Sherlock" role; but, in my eyes, they failed.